FEATURED FRESH VOICE

Each year, Soularize introduces our community to a fresh voice who we believe will significantly add to the conversation. Soularize 2011 is excited to feature Rachel Held Evans as an emerging communicator with a growing influence as both a writer and speaker. Rachel is a skeptic, Christ-follower, and popular blogger from Dayton, Tennessee—home of the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925.

 

Her first book, “Evolving in Monkey Town” (Zondervan, 2010), explores the interplay of faith and doubt and recounts the challenges of asking tough questions about Christianity in the context of the Bible Belt. In September, Rachel will finish a yearlong experiment in “biblical womanhood” in which she attempted to follow all of the Bible’s instructions for women as literally as possible. She blogs at www.rachelheldevans.com.

 

Preview: Listen to this Homebrewed Christianity podcast to hear what Rachel has been up to recently.
 

 
ENDORSEMENTS
“Rachel Held Evans is brilliant, gutsy, real, and hilarious, and Evolving in Monkey Town impacted my spiritual journey in ways I never imagined. I can’t remember a book that I enjoyed reading more, partly because Rachel is a great writer, and partly because she so fearlessly examines the conflict between her inherited beliefs about God and the truth of her own spiritual experience. There’s a certain weight to Evolving in Monkey Town that distinguishes it from the other spiritual memoir books out there.”
Jim Palmer, author of Divine Nobodies and Wide Open Spaces
 
“Rachel’s humorous yet humble memoir of growing up in the evangelical world serves as an encouraging guide for anyone looking to navigate through that particular subculture. As I saw my own journey reflected in its pages, I appreciated Rachel’s honesty in revealing the doubts and questions that arose when she confronted the cracks in the evangelical facade. The story told here is both faith and doubt affirming, a beautiful reflection of a heart earnestly seeking to follow God fully.”
Julie Clawson, author of Everyday Justice: The Global Impact of Our Daily Choices
 
“Evolving in Monkey Town is an argument Rachel argues with herself, God, the Bible, and Southern fundamentalism. Somehow, though, we are the winners in this argument because we learn and watch as a young woman emerges into a maturing faith that lets the kingdom vision of Jesus reshape her life. I found myself cheering her on.”
Scot McKnight, Karl A. Olsson Professor in Religious Studies, North Park University